Real "death" is the same as the loss of "cosmic consciousness"
1534. The "death" mentioned above that we said constituted half of the cycle of the spiral is of an entirely different nature. In itself it constitutes an actual obliteration of consciousness. It reduces the living being's knowledge, causing it to degenerate, become primitive, naive and ignorant; indeed, from being conscious of its own immortality and oneness with the Father and having experienced itself as being beyond time and space, it sinks all the way down to a state of experiencing life in which it totally loses its cosmic clear-sightedness and believes that its present physical life is the only life it has experienced, and that it will cease to exist when this life comes to an end. It believes that it is matter, subject to chance forces, indeed, the victim of the chance whims of Nature and the discretion of other beings. It has no idea that it is the true master of its own fate, and is therefore itself the source of any suffering and hardship it may experience, and that this primitive state is based entirely upon "ignorance", which in turn is the same as "lost cosmic consciousness". It is therefore not aware that this "lost cosmic consciousness" or the "ignorance" that consequently governs the individual is the real "death" or the state that was to befall "Adam" or the living being as a consequence of its eating of the "tree of knowledge of good and evil". Since this eating is the same as the eating of, or interest in, matter, this hunger has become so great in "Adam" or the living being that it has entirely drowned out its original cosmic consciousness or its real knowledge of its immortal self or I and the innermost structure of the universe. With its ignorance and great sensory impairment the being can but feel a sense of oneness with matter, with that which is temporal, with that which is perishable; indeed, it even feels that it is "one with death" instead of "one with life".
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